10 Years Later, BioShock Infinite Remains One of the Boldest AAA Shooters Ever Made

ign.com:

A decade ago director Ken Levine and his studio, Irrational Games, introduced us to the rotting society of Columbia with a choice: would you like to throw a baseball at an interracial couple, or instead hurl it at the bigoted announcer goading you on? Will you commit a hate crime, or stand against oppression? Regardless of the option you pick, the scenario plays out identically, with the ball left aside as protagonist Booker DeWitt uses a power tool to obliterate the face of a police officer. The sequence is both a bold introduction to BioShock Infinite’s exploration of America’s sordid relationship with race and an indication that such an exploration is going to be deeply flawed.

The mishandling of this moment telegraphs all of BioShock Infinite’s problems; that it will eventually descend into a situation that paints Black revolutionist Daisy Fitzroy as a monster no better than Columbia’s ultra-nationalist leader, Zachary Comstock. That you will spend the final half of the game gunning down the oppressed working classes. That its message will eventually be lost among its multiverse ambitions. And so BioShock Infinite doomed itself to live in the shadow of its greatest mistake.

It’s impossible to forgive those mistakes. But BioShock Infinite is not just the sum of its errors. On its tenth anniversary, it remains an admirably bold FPS that confronts topics of racism and classism in a manner that few AAA games have attempted since. While those explorations falter in the second half, Infinite’s first chapters tackle its themes with unflinching confidence in both its own convictions and its audience. It deplores the opinions of Columbia’s ruling class and industrial leaders, and uses deeply uncomfortable language and imagery